WHO: Baz Snell & Jeremy Dearborn WHAT: Breakfast in bed & plotting WHEN: This morning! WHERE: BGC flat WARNINGS: Avocado toast
A brush of frost framed the windows of the Corner, Snell, and Vane home. It wasn’t very visible in the dark, but it was hard to miss once Barnaby opened his bedroom curtains with a flick of his wand. Blinding sunshine spilled into the formerly pitch-black room, and Baz cheerfully whistled “Good Morning” as he settled on the edge of his bed. Balancing a plate of avocado toast topped with a fried egg in lap, Baz expectantly eyed the blanket covered lump in his bed for a few seconds before giving it a nudge. “Hey, Jez. Jezza. I made you breakfast.”
He waited another moment before wafting the plate in Jeremy’s direction. “I think it looks pretty good! So good that I feel tempted to eat it. And since you’re still sleeping…”
“I can’t believe you think that’s going to work,” Jeremy mumbled from his very warm and very comfortable position under the covers, ignoring the fact that it absolutely had. It took him another moment before he shifted, stretching in an effort to wake up a little before finally sitting up. Any reluctance he’d had about being conscious melted away as his eyes focused on the food and the man who’d brought it.
“This is very sweet and not something you needed to do, you know.”
“Sweet’s my middle name,” Baz replied, smiling as he held the plate out for Jeremy. There was an impish arch of his eyebrow as he added, “Maybe I’ll show you how sweet I can be after you’re done eating. You can repay me for breakfast.”
“Oh so that’s how it is. And here I thought this was a romantic gesture instead of a bribe,” Jeremy said as he took the plate with a grin. “I’ll have to see how good breakfast is before we can negotiate repayment, though.”
A bite later, he narrowed his eyes in consideration. “I guess I like you.”
“You like me a lot,” Baz teased, reaching over to nudge Jeremy’s thigh. He flexed his hand — the hand the Death Eater had broken — before pulling away. “That’s okay, lots of people do. I’m charming and handsome and make a mean avocado toast.”
Jeremy bit back the first response that came to mind with a bite of toast, chewing away any inclination to proclaim certain feelings that probably wouldn’t go over well. “You’re okay, but I guess the toast is pretty good.”
He reached out to lightly take Baz’s hand. “How’s it feeling?”
“Normal,” Baz told him, his eyes downcast. “One hundred percent normal, thank you very fucking much, magic. But I still like, kind of feel it? In my head, I mean. I know that’s silly.”
“It’s not silly.” Jeremy gently squeezed his hand in a gesture that was meant to be comforting. “It’s pretty common to feel things like that for a while, even if there’s no physical reason to anymore. Especially after something like an attack.”
Smiling, Baz interlocked their fingers and squeezed Jeremy’s hand in return. He focused on the warm, simple sensation of their entwined hands, committing the moment to memory. Maybe it could replace the memory of his hand being shattered — a memory that had replayed countless times over the past few days.
“Okay, so it’s not silly. We don’t have to talk about it.” He gave a crooked grin as he continued, “We can talk about how good your breakfast is, or how handsome I am, or… you know, the chocolates sitting on my desk.” His eyes briefly cut over to the bag of Rosier’s chocolates before meeting Jeremy’s gaze.
“Oh.” Jeremy held the gaze for a moment, before he looked over at the chocolates with a twist in his stomach that he wasn’t sure he could entirely identify. It was probably apprehension, more second thoughts about the whole thing than he’d had prior to innocent people nearly dying in his living room. Before the increased string of intimidation attacks that were meant to stop an election but also retaliation of exactly this type. He knew that meant they needed to do it anyway, but he wished he felt as good about it as he had when they’d conceived of the idea.
“They are right there, I guess. We should use them.”
Baz’s expression shifted into one of concern. “You don’t want to anymore? Because, I mean, we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not really that I don’t want to. I’m just more nervous about it, I guess.” He shrugged, in an attempt to seem casual about the whole thing. Though he wasn’t sure that poisoning someone, no matter how evil, really ought to be a casual affair.
“I’m not backing out of it.”
Baz let go of Jeremy’s hand in order to push himself more fully onto the bed, kicking his feet up as he settled into the pillow beside his boyfriend. “I get being nervous after recent events. But there’s no way they’re going to figure out who sent it.” He tilted his head over and smiled, a warm and encouraging smile that seemed somewhat at odds with the topic of poisoning. “Rodolphus Lestrange, on top of having the world’s most punchable face, has a fuckton of enemies.”
“Them figuring out who sent it isn’t really what I’m worried about,” Jeremy admitted, leaning into Baz because he was there and because he could. “It’s what they might decide to do because they can’t figure out who sent it. But that’s how they protect against this sort of thing, and I know that.”
“Oh,” Baz replied, because that really hadn’t occurred to him at all. Now that the idea was out there, his brain unhelpfully supplied a list of terrible things the Death Eaters could do to retaliate. Frowning, he nudged Jeremy’s foot with his own as he considered his reply. “I hadn’t really — I wasn’t thinking about that. I still want to do it, but now my brain is all, remember how the Death Eaters killed six people because of a protest?”
Jeremy sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “That’s what makes it hard to fight back. They don’t react in a way that’s reasonable. They just murder and torture, and I know not doing anything doesn’t help either so.”
He looked Baz, catching his eyes. “I still think we should do it. I’ve got the poison ready to go.”
Silence settled between them as Baz entertained their options. They had the opportunity to do something — even something small — but the Death Eaters would undoubtedly retaliate. Then again, the Death Eaters often killed innocent people over nothing.
Finally, he said, “You’ve got poison ready to go?” Baz pressed a hand to his forehead and pretended to swoon. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Laughing, Jeremy leaned in and pressed a kiss to his jaw and then another near his ear. “If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll talk dirty to you for real.”
All thoughts of chocolates, poison, and Death Eaters immediately evaporated from Baz’s mind. He set Jeremy’s plate aside on the nightstand and flashed a wolfish grin. “Well, that’d be one way to make my Christmas wish come true.”